


A Dream Between Days

by Damceon



Series: Character Backstories [8]
Category: Gamer Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damceon/pseuds/Damceon
Summary: Some exposition and character development during a campaign.
Series: Character Backstories [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672036





	A Dream Between Days

"What did you ask for, Raes?"

The world spun out of control, every light splintered and scattered in a thousand colors, every face blurred into a shapeless monster with hateful eyes. He heard music, but the melody was broken... chaotic and maddening.

"...a creature of madness..." Ghostscales had said, the voice in his mind was almost afraid.

He could see Ignas, now... but it wasn't Ignas...

The administrator's office was dark, the blood on the cleaver was darker. Raes felt the hot blood of the elf woman spattering on his scales. _Dying... fragile...weak..._ The sensation clawed at his throat, tore out pieces of his eyes and the world turned into a plane of fury. His brother had done this to him... their father... their mother... his flesh and blood... He himself... Raes was responsible... all of them were responsible.

The sword... as much a part of him as the elven woman... it sang his rage and screamed his pain into his brother's neck. Ignas hesitated to stop the blow. It was a clean strike, but Raes did not watch the twitching body fall. His brother's head landed at the elf's feet where she sat bleeding. Dying... his brother and his love together. Ignas' eyes met his as he scooped the elf into his massive scaled arms.

"Thank you." The lips moved and the voice was clear in his mind. He had given his brother peace.

_At what cost?_ The question lingered behind with the severed head. It lingered in the spreading pool of blood.

"CARLA!" He screamed, but his throat was changed and his cry was a terrible roar of agony as he stormed across the room.

"You did this." Carla whispered as Raes searched frantically for Thanatos... he needed a healer... _Carla... Ghost and Spirits, Carla._

" _YOU DID THIS_!" She shrieked, now standing before him... maimed and dead and accusing, pointing at him with the stump of her wrist where a beautiful hand once had been.

"No... Carla, please..." He sobbed, but the words were growls and snarls and his mouth tasted of ashes and blood. Her blood.

"What did you ask for, Raes?" She demanded, striking him. The stump of her wrist struck with such force he was driven to his knees. "WHAT DID YOU ASK FOR?!"

"Carla, don't... please... don't leave me!" he begged, but it was no use. She would not listen and she struck him again and again... _Carla, please forgive me._

She was laughing... laughing horribly. The slash across her throat gaped and spurted crimson, showering him with hot blood, raining on him with each savage swipe of her maimed arm. Crushing him down, driving him through the floor.

And into a small blank room, with molded, rotten mattresses on the floor and cracked and peeling paint on the walls. Alice stared through him, waiting. The door behind him was closed, but he knew instantly where it lead.

"What did you ask for, Raes?" She asked, her eyes lifted up to look into his... without warning, she was staring into his soul and his scales were melting away until only his gray-brown skin remained. She frowned at his silence and confusion... looked at him in his nakedness and Raes was more afraid now than ever before in his life.

"You came and took everything." He tried to say, but his tongue stumbled over itself, sticking to his teeth and muddling the words. _You took EVERYTHING!_ He wanted to scream.

The door opened behind him, and Alice refused to see him. He was a ghost, watching his own life pass before him in a shadow of what it had been. The boy he had once been vanished with Alice... but the room remained... his father remained...

Raes knew where Alice had taken the son... he remembered the world falling to pieces in pain and light and screams drowned in fluid. But here... _here_ his father stood alone in an empty room that smelled of rot and the paint peeled from the walls.

"The scarecrow wanted a brain." The man whispered to himself, looking at his hands. Raes had loved the man... had loved the tenderness and stern discipline... had loved the mother who died and left them both alone.

"The tin man wanted a heart." The man looked up, seeing Raes before him... and he smiled that sad, sweet smile that only a father can give his son. "And the lion wanted courage."

"Father... please don't leave me." Raes sank to his knees... he was a boy, weeping beside his mother as she died in his father's arms. "Please mother... spirits, don't take her from me again!"

"Dorothy just wanted to go home, Raes." His mother whispered soothingly, her blood-covered hand smoothing his hair and caressing his cheek.

"You can't leave me again... please!" Raes cried, but he was only a baby, trying to wake Ignas beside him in the cradle... but Ignas wouldn't wake... so Raes cried.

"What did you ask for, Raes?" Ignas' eyes flared open, pits of flame in the infants tiny pink face. The words HURT him... they burned him... Ignas' tiny hand touched his forehead, and the world turned to fire.

"WHAT DID YOU ASK FOR, RAES?!" A thousand voices demanded, unseen hands tearing at him through the flames, ripping his scales from his flesh and opening great tears in his body... his blood was everywhere... he flailed against the fire, tried to fight against the unseen... but he grew weaker and weaker.

"...madness..." Ghostscales echoed, but Raes didn't understand.

"What would you ask for, Raes?" His father asked. They were sitting on the steps of their apartment building, drinking a beer his father shared with him. "If you were there with Dorothy and the Scarecrow, the Tin-Man and the Lion and little Toto, too... what would you ask for from the Wizard?"

_He never gave them anything!_ Raes tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth. His father had that wonderful sad, sweet smile on his face... the smile of a man who knows all the answers before he ever asks the question.

"There's no place like home." Raes had said, so long ago that it hurt to remember.

"Is that what you'd ask for?" His father's smile had shown him... His father had known before he even asked.

"I guess I'd ask for everything." Raes had smiled and laughed... his father laughed, too... but it wasn't from happiness.

_You KNEW!_ Raes tried to scream, tried to lash out at him. _You KNEW it was a LIE!_

"You know the Wizard won't give you everything." His father smiled and ruffled his hair. "You can only ask for one thing, like they did in the story."

"I don't like that... it's too mean." Raes pouted, but inside Raes was sobbing. _It's too much. Even one thing is too much. To lose everything for one thing._

"So what would you ask for, son?" His father's face was grave, now... different... behind the warmth and concern was the cold hard truth that it was all a lie. "Tell me."

Raes was cold... afraid of this question. Afraid of his father for asking it. Raes knew the answer he'd given... a child's answer... something the Wizard would be incapable of giving... he knew then, too... and he wanted to see what his father would say...

"I want happiness, dad." Raes had remembered all the pain of his life and all the loss. "I'd ask the Wizard for happiness, even though I know he could never give me that."

His father had smiled that damned smile... the all-knowing smile of a liar.

_You knew!_ Raes sobbed, curled up on the floor beside Carla in his bedding. It was the Lair... the buried apartments where Louie and the rest of the team had carved out a home. It was close and dark in the room, but Carla was warm and sweet-smelling and whole. _This is real._ He told himself, touching her cheek with a finger and tracing the tip of her ear before her eyes opened and he held very still.

"Are you real, Raes, or a dream?" She breathed deeply, her hands touching his face and finding a smile. "I'd almost forgotten your smile."

"I'd almost forgotten happiness." Raes hadn't wanted the tears to come, but they did.

"Are you happy?" She asked, her own smile warm and welcome in the darkness.

"With you, everything is possible." He kissed her face and remembered. "It's what I should've asked for in the first place."

He could see the confusion on her face, but the smile made it all the more worthwhile. He shook his head.

"It's a long story, my love... I'll tell you when I'm older."

"Is this your happiness?" the voice was cold and hollow. He fell to the floor, naked and shivering. Carla lay dead beneath him, maimed with a bloody smile across her slender throat. "Is this how you repay the wizard?"

"You have no power here." Raes looked into the eyes of his madness... into his own eyes. He was afraid of himself, still... afraid of what lurked in the darkest corners of his mind.

" _I_ am the Wizard. _ME_!" His shadow declared and pointed at him. " _YOU_ are the one with no power."

Another shadow stepped from the darkness and punched Raes in the face, knocking him down toward Carla's body.

"You would do well to remember who is in control."

"I am in control." Raes looked up, his tusks longer and his body more fierce... _My flesh of the Fourth Age._ "You are only a piece of the whole."

The two shadows circled... but Raes stood and looked into the darkness. More shadows stepped out... a dozen... a score... a hundred... a thousand...

"You!" Raes pointed, singling out one among thousands. "What did you ask for?"

"I asked for victory."

"Victory is part of everything." And Raes pointed again. "You! What did you ask for?"

"I asked for suffering."

"Suffering is part of everything." Again he pointed. "You!"

"I asked for discipline."

"Part of everything."

"Where is my mother?" A child... a shadow of the Raes-that-was... stepped from among the shadows. "Where are my father and brother?"

The clamour rose, many shadows laughing, jeering... more still answered only with silence. Raes knelt before the boy.

"I am your father." Raes smiled his father's smile. "I am your mother and your brother. I am part of everything."

"What will you do to stop the Horrors?" One shadow demanded, others answering his cry.

"I will battle fear with hope, despair with courage, and hate with love." Raes replied, and shook his head. "None have ever stopped the Horrors. I do not say they can be stopped. I will not say they cannot be stopped. You who asked for victory... will you seek it against the Horrors?"

Victory nodded.

"You who seeks sorrow... Suffering... Death... Life... You who are parts of everything... will you find part of what you seek in me?"

All but one shadow nodded.

"And you?" Raes turned to the one that called itself the wizard. "What is it that you asked for?"

"I am the wizard." The shadow sneered. "I asked for nothing."

All the other shadows seemed to flicker and grow smaller at that, but Raes did not flinch.

"You who would ask nothing... in asking become part of everything."

Fury clouded the wizard's face, but the din that rose around him would not be denied. Raes had struck the most telling blow. The shadows gathered to him one by one, becoming part of him... until only the wizard remained... The part of him that wanted nothing. Raes was too strong to be denied, but the Nothing resisted to the last step.

"I will come for you again, Raes." it hissed, so near he could feel its breath cold on his face. "I will destroy you and everything you love."

"Everything is possible." Raes smiled his father's smile and crushed the shadow's face before making it part of the whole.


End file.
